Our Work

P4P Stories from the field

A closer look at the farmers whose lives are being changed by P4P.

Uganda - Farmers in the north see good times ahead

Charles Komakech plunges his hoe into the rust red soil, shooing away a wayward chicken. Corn pushes up, shoulder high, stretching toward the sky. Within hours, the rains will come thundering down, turning the tiny farming roads in this slice of northern Uganda into muddy rivers.

It’s been a good year for Komakech, and not just because of the rains. The 38-year-old farmer counts among more than 7,000 smallholders in the Acholi sub-region to join WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme.

Honduras – School meals provided by smallholders

WFP is responsible for buying and transporting the food, while programming and food monitoring are done jointly by WFP, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development. Other local partners include UNICEF, FAO, USAID, CIDA and various NGOs who provide support in areas such as school infrastructure, deworming, school vegetable gardens and nutrition education.

The Government of Honduras steadily increased its commitment and programme ownership through the years.

Guatemala - Women take charge of their farms

YUPILTEPQUE—When she remembers growing up in a rural village in Guatemala one thing stands out for Roxanna Valenzuela. It was how the community ostracised her family, because her mother, a single parent, insisted on sending her 3 daughters to school even though she was struggling to put food on the table. 

Today, Roxanna, 32, is the secretary of The Municipal Association of Active Women from Yupiltepeque (AMMYA), a farmers group involved in the Purchase for Progress pilot (P4P) which uses the WFP’s role as a food buyer to help connect small farmers to markets.

Malawi – Farmers sell their maize online

For the past year P4P Malawi has been working with farmers’ organisations to improve their business mindset and their understanding of contract terms. Together with partners, P4P concentrated its capacity development support during the last six months on training that focused on improving the ability of organisations to plan and deliver (see here).

In August, P4P witnessed the first results of this strategy.

Tanzania: Government and WFP increase market opportunities for smallholders

Smallholders will be able to sell their maize to NFRA, while ten percent of NFRA’s purchases will be reserved for smallholders participating in WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) pilot in the country.
The new agreement could quadruple the size of current P4P purchases in Tanzania, taking purchases from a 2011 high of 4,300 tons to 20,000 tons annually. Under the previous arrangement, WFP was already able to buy 90,000 tons of maize from NFRA. WFP uses the food bought from NFRA for its food assistance programmes in the region, such as in Kenya, Somalia or South Sudan.

Honduras – First professionals graduate from new training centre

“To take part in this agribusiness training has been highly satisfying and relevant, because my duties are closely related with this area and now I can put all the knowledge I have gained into practice with the small farmers that I am providing technical support” concluded  Ana Maritza Madrid, one of the first 54 graduates.

Ghana – The importance of weighing scales

Fati Mahama is a smallholder from the district of Ejura Sekyedumasi in Ghana’s Ashanti Region. She grows maize and cowpea on a small farm which is barely 2 hectares. In March this year, she was in for a surprise when she sold maize to the World Food Programme (WFP) through its Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative.  

“I can’t believe that I sold only six heaped maxi bags (usually a 100kg bag) and made so much money,” she said after she realized that she had just increased her income by 50 percent.

Malawi – Training farmers in business analysis and planning

Background

In October 2011 a lessons learned workshop with partners had shown that the P4P strategy, based on procurement-focused capacity development, had some limitations: it did not develop FOs performance, nor build their capacity to enter regular procurement modalities. The reason behind this was that FOs were and are at differing development stages, or lack appropriate supply- side support, and thus simply providing an opportunity to market their goods did not translate into good performance on contracts.

Sierra Leone – Introducing “gari” into the food basket

Under the Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme, WFP in Sierra Leone issued a contract for five tons of gari to a small trader in early 2011 - this marked the first time that WFP had tried to purchase gari locally and it was successful. After this initial purchase, WFP started to negotiate further contracts with farmers’ organizations supported by supply-side partners. Subsequently, three more contracts for 5 tons each were signed in mid-2011; a second-time contract with the trader and two with farmers’ organizations (FOs).

Tanzania - Farmer's point of view on progress of P4P

Until 3 years ago, the farmers of Slahamo, a small village in northern Tanzania, could only rely on their own resources for their agricultural activities. Living some 150 kilometers west of Arusha, they faced huge difficulties in accessing inputs and financial services, and reaching profitable markets for their produce. Even the district council’s warehouse that had been built in the 1970’s was largely abandoned.